The management of recorded media contents stored on a limited capacity storage device is a recurrent problem that many consumers experience in their everyday life.
For example, after some months of usage, usually the end user cumulates watched and also unwatched media contents that could be critical in term of storage space. Typically, this could result in no further recording functionality, if the end user does not clean up by himself the HDD or the NAS.
In the prior art, some solutions are proposed to help the end user manage his storage space.
For example, the documents US20030206719A1 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,882,074B2 propose an algorithm based on contents prioritization in order to save storage (HDD) space. For example, the algorithm deletes first the content which has the lowest priority. The criteria of prioritization can be chosen by the end user himself or based on the status of watched and unwatched contents.
According to the document U.S. Pat. No. 8,364,021B2, the classification and preferences determined by the end user save storage (HDD) space by deleting the content having the lowest interest.
A variant solution is described in the document U.S. Pat. No. 7,769,977B2, that estimates the end user content consumption time to anticipate content deletion and helps anticipate storage (HDD) space savings.
Thus, the prior art provides solutions based on prioritization, content consumption time, user preference or interest, for managing the storage space only by deleting recorded contents when the remaining free space is critical.